Assessing the Implementation of Democracy in Guinea: Is it a Work-in-progress for a Pride or Otherwise?

Key words: Democracy, Education, Government, Religious

Abstract

The paper assesses the implementation of democracy in Guinea either as work-in-progress for a pride or otherwise. For the purpose of analyses, political instability and education are discussed briefly but thoroughly. Restoring religious values are discussed along with promoting love. Roles of vision and mission are analysed. The roles of different political institutions and their influence in the running of the country are highlighted. Finally, overall conclusions are presented.

Key Words: Democracy, Education, Stability

1. Introduction

The democratisation process has been introduced in Guinea since early 1990s and, yet, still not completed. Democratic multipartism had given Guineans a huge promise for a general national upliftment. The point is that what seems to be impossible then was for some Guineans, in reality, a pride. The expectation was that the situations would be much better than those of 1966s, 1970s and 1980s under the one-party system and the military rule, which meant to be a pride. However, Guinea reached its lowest turmoil in late 2000s and early 2010s – to present; these are the times when civil unrests, the coup d’état, electoral crises and violent political demonstrations – the political instability.

Further, these concerns have hijacked the nation’s optimism in its democratic process as the situations are not enhancing. The lacks of confidence and trust between the ruling party and the opposition in the process have further deteriorated the political instability and worsen the bad governance. Therefore, it can be confirm that the work-in-progress to implement the democracy in Guinea is still very uncertain. The current atmospheres make you feel very worried about the upcoming local/municipal elections and the presidential election of 2015.

However, miseries, dissatisfactions, frustrations and uncertainties have been the major problems to overcome the challenges and make Guineans’ dream come true in terms of fulfilling some of their expectations. Despite what has been happening on the ground, most Guinean politicians both ruling the party and the opposition behave recklessly, which has been further deteriorating the already awful circumstances. As a result, the security of Guinea is in danger and the country has to be rescued. As usual, Guinea has been living with the devils since its independence – a nation divided, torn, without any compromise and incapable to unite all its strengths for a common goal of the national development. Some recent examples of this disunity is the so-called Les Accords du 03 Juillet 2013(The agreements of the July 03, 2013). Why the mediation of UN? Prior to this, Why the mediation of ECOWAS? Why cannot Guineans reconcile between Guineans in Guinean issues? These questions somehow fade away the hope expected from a democratic Guinea. It seems, at least for the time being, that the implementation of democracy in Guinea is more or less of a backwardness for a shame.

It is well known that, in Guinea, injustice has been happening for a very long time, which has created anger and hatred. Of course, these problems have put the country’s security at risk but they are solvable if a united front is developed for the national interest. The national interest includes getting rid of discrimination, inciting hatred and violence. In a peaceful Guinea, the arsonists lose; the voice of those who plead for peace becomes stronger than that of those who plead for violence and hatred – for the sake of building a true and fair democratic society.

In the paper the following points are addressed; political stability, education and different political institutions and their influence in the running of the country. Following these, the overall conclusions are provided in the final section relating to the study covered in this paper. In other words, to properly assess the implementation of democracy in Guinea, advantages and disadvantages of the process have to be carefully analysed, in the author’s context, as a work-in-progress for a pride or backwardness for a shame.

2. Political Instability

Political instability indicates bad governance and weakens a government as well as makes it unpopular – its inability to function and execute an agenda for a nation’s development. In fact, political instability has resulted in collapse of Guinean economy further; weaken social relations between different communities; killed the culture in terms of moralities and traditions; drain the brains; exodus of manpower – the youth – to the West, elsewhere in the world and on the continent; and lack of foreign direct investment as no one wants to do business in a total chaotic environment – as the other one says that “the money is scared of noise”.

“Conflicts and political instability are common phenomena in developing societies, a situation that affects peaceful co-existence and the attainment of sustainable development. Political instability arises as a result of the inability of government and the society in general to adequately address the grievances of the population.”

(Adeyeri, 2013, p. 119)

As stated above, effects of political instability on Guinea are holding the country back from its sustainability, which has further punished the country – declining investments both from within and without the country. Besides, it has resulted in some violent demonstrations. Whenever there is a political demonstration it ends up ugly, bloody, deadly, disastrous and, most dangerously, ethnic. Unpatriotic leaders use ethnicity to organise people for political actions pretentiously to 'defend' ethnic interests (Opondo, 2003). Clashes of different political supporters take place during most demonstrations, which cost businesses fortunes; they cost families lives; and they cost the country a bad reputation. As a result, the country becomes poorer and unemployment rises. Souaré (2010) states, in West Africa, election related violence has happened in different polls – parliamentary, presidential and municipal – in recent years. Unfortunately, this has been the case in Guinea since 2010. The 2010 Guinean presidential elections both the first round and the run off had been carried out with a lots of violent clashes. Following these were the series of clashes, in 2012 and 2013, during political demonstrations regarding meeting the demands of the opposition in the legislative election, which was held, at last, in September 2013.

“The combination of relative poverty and illiteracy could be exploited by political entrepreneurs to wage violent conflicts. The argument is that high poverty and illiteracy rates in a society, especially amongst the youth who usually constitute the bulk of violent groups. This is all the more obvious given that uneducated youth are susceptible to make simple calculations without taking much heed of their consequences.”

(Souaré, 2010, p. 13)

As stated above, it is clearly deducible that there is no true wellbeing in Guinea as a whole – the poverty has prevailed. In fact, one of the major causes of political unrest in Guinea is the high poverty and a high illiteracy rate – the literacy rate in Guinea is just 41% (CIA World Factbook), which is very low. In such a retarded situation, it is very easy to get deprived jobless destitute impoverished youth to the street.

Another major cause of political instability is the unconstitutional regime change – a coup d’état. Military coups is to be considered ‘as an unacceptable and anachronistic act’, sad developments on the Continent, when the peoples have committed themselves to respect of the rule of law based on their will expressed through the ballot and not the bullet (Souaré, 2014). Sadly, immediately after the death of the second President of Guinea on 22^nd December 2008, a junta called National Council for Democracy and Development (Conseil National pour la Démocratie et du Développement, CNDD) seized power in a military coup d'état on 23 December 2008. The junta had promised to hand the power to the civilian rule without them being contenders. However, the opposition had suspected that the then junta leader had an intention to run for the presidential election – as he had threatened that he would remove his military uniform. Subsequently, the opposition organised a peaceful demonstration on 28^th September 2009 at the national stadium of the same name, though all political demonstrations had been banned by the military authority. Deplorably, the military opened fire at the rally killing about 157 demonstrators and injuring hundreds of them. This was shocking and needless; the aftermath was series of accusations amongst the military as the junta leader denied any order of such massacre. As a result, he was shot in the head in an attempted assassination on December 3^rd 2009. He was replaced by the defence minister as interim president to run the transition. Eventually, an elected civilian president was sworn in on 21^st December 2010. However, the transition still on as the municipal/ local elections have not yet taken place because of some disputes over electoral process between the ruling party and the opposition.

The political instability in Africa in general can be related somehow to economic dependency, which makes the influence of African Union (AU) and Regional Economic Communities (RECs) on the Continent limited. However, according to Souaré (2009), recently, analysts and observers have indicated that the rebirth of military coups and other governance-related concerns constitute as obstacles for the democratisation of the Continent, when AU and RECs are working hard to adjust their relevant mechanisms and policies to deal with these issues of dysfunctionality in the post-colonial African countries. As a matter of fact, AU and RECs can only be effective and efficient in their roles if member states are independent enough – economically independent and perhaps militarily – and united, only then their hard work will pay off – to deal with these issues of dysfunctionality in post-colonial Africa. The examples of this are the Guinean case in 2008 and that of Egypt in 2013. Both cases were coups d’état. The Guinean junta could not stand a chance of survival as pressures and sanctions were building up against them both continentally and internationally – AU, ECOWAS, EU and USA. Eventually, the Guinean junta hand over the power to a civilian government after a presidential election in which they were not candidates. Unlike the Egyptian case, AU had not had a chance to pressurise Egyptian junta to leave the power as they had not received supports of USA and EU as did in Guinean case.

3. Education

The most important thing that enhances human life is Education. Education doest not only facilitate individual achievements but improve general way of doing things in terms of thinking and reactions. For proper understanding and implementation of democracy, the vast majority of the people must be educated; unfortunately that is not the case in Guinea yet. In my opinion, the core objectives of democracy are wellbeing, political stability and economic stability. The development only becomes possible if there is stability and provided that the society is learning. These core objectives can only be achieved with effectiveness if their “prerequisite” is satisfactory, at least. In fact, for Guinea to develop and know prosperity it has to be a learned and learning nation to surmount its six decades of underdevelopment and related social issues. That is, the Government has to make education its prime priority for the short, intermediate and long run. To overcome decades of neglect, our top priority was, is and always will be education, education, education (Blair, 2001). Certainly, Education is likely to be positively correlated to stability (Amoah and Armah, 2011). An educated person is very unlikely to be incited in participating in incidents that cause political instability as they are expected to analyse consequences of anti-stability behaviours. That is, the more a country increases its literacy rate, the more it is expected to enjoy stability.

The hard work of Guineans will only pay off if the government establishes the prerequisite and the backbone of all developments, which is education. Quality education is the only way out for solving Guinean problems and it does not merely mean the Western style of learning but is much broader than that. First, look West policy; look East – Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Malaysia – policy; and look BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) Countries policies; as well as policies of emerging African countries. Having said that, “look policy” simply means observe these mentioned regions of the developed, developing and emerging regions’ policies, imitate them, adjust and implement in our own way according to your means, environment and culture.

The government education programme must start tasks at grassroots – the primary education. The communities must sensitised and supported by the government in such a way that individual families become helpful by taking the education of their children seriously in terms of wellbeing; unhealthy and hungry children are unlikely to learn. The government in turn must provide quality schools – excellence teaching staff, appropriate facilities and resources, and normal class room sizes. Encouraging home and school environment help children acquire basic skills and knowledge. Further, teachers must have proper quality training and reward systems to carry out their duties professionally to shrink gap between Guinea and emerging nations over time. Talented children must be rewarded and encouraged for their outstanding performances and manners. All these have to be connected to the national education programme for a certain contribution at the national level. In addition, provision of preschool education is essential, such as childcare and nurseries, in two aspects, on one hand, it initiates kids to learning and prepare them to be better pupils at primary schools; and on the other hand, it helps parents as they can take on works and undertake literacy training programmes, which strengthen rural human capital. As a result, the rural communities can be encouraged to pursue their studies to a higher level.

The government has to continuously further increase its efforts in developing the education sector especially in rural areas, where school infrastructures are too rare. Education must always be given a great consideration from the Government in the course of the annual budget allocation from a mere 2.5% of its GDP in 2012 (CIA World Factbook) to 10 –15%. Like almost all other sectors, education has never been given priority from the country’s independence until now. This can be seen when looking at the current situation of the country in general and its literacy rate 41% (CIA World Factbook) in particular. There have never been clear education strategies known to Guinean public, which indicate the lack of ambition in terms of human capital development and empowerment of the Guinean people. Clear education strategies can help the country develop trainings and skills in different stages – primary, secondary, tertiary and vocational education as well as working people both blue collars and white collars – domains and chances in addition to providing enough expert trainers and quality trainings. Further, clear education strategies can help in development of human capital, especially in rural areas where the shortage of quality human capital is even more acute. So, different training programmes can be applied by the Government covering the running of curriculums on rural development, leadership and management to rural public servants, private employees, leaders of rural governments and institutions. An educated people lead to stability and prosperity. Education can help in restoring religious values and love each other as well as having visions and missions.

3.1 Restoring Religious Values and Traditional Moralities

On one hand, the religion teaches us values that are the solutions for humanity, on the other hand the traditions teach us complementary measures. Indeed, in Guinea, we have greatly lost our values and moralities. We need to go back to what these teach us for solving our problems, which is going to be an awakening to settle the dilemma we have caused to ourselves. That is, we have left our way of life.

The purposes of the religion in making us a better nation are solving six necessities of welfare set, which are preserving of faith, preserving of soul, preserving of wealth, preserving of mind, preserving of offspring and preserving of honour (Auda, 2008). All these six are basic necessities in human life, human rights are protected when these are preserved in a society. These can help us in preserving peace and stability. As we will no longer hurt nor kill one another and we will no longer destroy our properties and infrastructure.

Restoring our faith is the number one thing we have to do in order to preserve the soul. That is, if we had proper faith then we would not have civil disorders and violent demonstrations. If the welfare set of six necessities mentioned above are perfectly followed in a society, then there will be security and stability. Security allows us to work and take care of our vulnerable ones. Accordingly, our minds get developed in stability as we are able to concentrate on our works, education and learning, researches and development projects. The combination of the three help us prepare future of our offspring – the youth. That is when our ultimate objective, which is honour, is achieved. Eventually, we will be able to assert that we have achieved happiness, when we know for sure our children will be able to do more than us. However, our current attitudes and behaviours do not give much possibility for this hope.

3.2 Love but not Tolerance

We do not just have to tolerate one another but have to learn to love one another. This is because you may hate someone but tolerate them, however when you love someone is from the heart and it means there must be no “an atom’s weight of” hatred in your hearts against them. Further, we lack patriotism – the love of our fatherland. Our so-called intellectuals are worse than vultures – at least vultures share dead animals. They are too corrupted and they embezzle our public funds for their personal wants when they are in office. This must stop and they must learn how to serve the country not themselves. Until we love our fatherland, there is no chance of progress. It is pretty simple, you would not like to be hurt yourself as a leader/minister; how can you then hurt your fellow citizens by mismanaging public funds for your personal, family and crony interests? “The people deserve better. Love for people what you love for yourself” (Auda, 2008). Basically, you love for people what you love for yourself to be just and apply the concept of true equal opportunity – as we are all equal with equal rights.

3.3 Vision

For us or for any society to advance they must have a vision(s). A vision is nothing but a dream of level you want to reach in a determined planned future. A vision helps you plan and work toward its achievement. Apparently, there is a ministry in charge of planning, so we have been having plans/visions on paper, however those paperwork based plans have been hardly materialised. That is why I claim that the country lacks visions and that is why we are how we are today. Though visions are almost fully unachievable as they are dreams how you want to be, they encourage continuous hard work, prosperity and, hence, development. We would have been much better advanced than our current level if we were visionaries – working towards our visions in real life not just on papers. Our government should come up with their visions for the country and make peoples aware of them. For example, the Guinean Government should come up with a set of vision for basic development infrastructures by 2025. By 2025 we will have decent schools for all children around the country, adequate health care for all, 24/7 electricity and water supply in all thirty three cities of the country as well as Conakry special zone, also all these cities will be linked by properly built roads in that time period.

3.4 Mission and Evaluation

A mission is about implementing the paper work of vision into reality. The vision only comes true when the mission is accomplished. A mission is an assignment, so an assignment needs assessment when it is completed. That is when the evaluation comes in. The evaluation is measuring the performance of the vision in this aspect. This is the last stage of any process. Correct short comings at all stages of a mission life time for efficient and effective accomplishment and that is when an objective(s) is achieved, then set a new vision(s).

4. Different Political Institutions and Their Influence in the Running of the Country

In a democratic multiparty presidential system, as in Guinea, it is vital to separate powers into executive, legislative and judiciary. These are called political institutions linked to one another and must be independent to prevent the concentration of power in the hands of one person and abuse of power/ dictatorship – as happened under one-party system and the military rule from the country’s independence in 1958 to early 1990’s. Establishing these three branches of political institutions in Guinea does mean having a true democracy but it is a way forward, at least. It is just the beginning of democratisation process as there are still many points to be sorted out. Their influence in the running of the country is that there should be no overlapping of tasks.

“Separation of powers” refers to the idea that the major institutions of state should be functionally independent and that no individual should have powers that span these offices. The principal institutions are usually taken to be the executive, the legislature and the judiciary.”

(Benwell and Gay, 2011, p.1)

The day-to-day responsibility of running Guinea as a state is guaranteed by its executive branch, which executes and enforces the law; however it does not make laws nor interpret them. The highest authority of the executive branch in Guinea is the head/ chief of state (le chef d’état). The head of state must obtain a majority of the votes in a popular presidential election for a renewable five years’ term. They appoint a prime minister and the members of Government (Council of Ministers). The last presidential election held in Guinea was in November 2010 – the current president received 52.5% (CENI, 2010) of the votes in last election – and the next is expected by the end of 2015.

The legislative branch is the law making branch of political institutions. It keeps an eye on Government actions like approving and amending budgets. The name used for this branch in Guinea is the National Assembly (l'Assemblée Nationale) with 114 seats and it is unicameral, issued in 78 direct popular and proportional party votes and 38 constituencies for a five years’ term. The last legislative election held in Guinea was on 28^th September 2013. The current ruling party RPG – Rassemblement du Peuple de Guinée (the Rally of the Guinean People) has 53 seats, the opposition, UFDG – Union des Forces Démocratiques de Guinée (Union of Democratic Forces of Guinea) UFR – Union des Forces Républicaines (Union of Republican Forces), have 37 and 10 seats, respectively, and others have 14 seats. The next legislative election is due in autumn 2018.

The judiciary branch is the law interpreting and application part of political institutions. Its main objective is peacemaking – justice. The name used for this branch in Guinea is the Supreme Court (la Cour suprême) and has the first president (le premier président de la cour suprême). It is the highest judiciary authority in Guinea and disposes three chambers, namely a constitutional and administrative chamber; a judicial chamber (civil, criminal and economic); and a chamber of accounts. The court is to be restructured by the National Assembly according the amended constitution of 2010.

5. Conclusions

The implementation of democracy in Guinea should have make Guineans proud if it had brought us relative stability both politically and economically. The efforts being made may pay off with more hard work in the medium to long run; however, at least, for the time being it is more of a shame for backwardness than work-in-progress for a pride. This is because democracy meant to give relatively political and economic stability, improved governance as well as relatively improved living standard, which has not been the case yet. The way forward is to create a politically stable environment to enable the country to establish proper education background. As a result, we get to work and generate incomes and resources to invest in our education. Education helps us work on much broader horizon for solving our problems by restoring religious values and traditional moralities. Likewise, education can be a way for us to love one another, have a vision(s) and a mission(s). An educated population is a way forward to strong political institutions and, hence, enhanced democracy.

We do not have to rely on our natural resources too much; as they are nothing without human resources. Countries like South Korea and Singapore have no natural resources at all but they are at the top of the world because of their human resources. In truth, we lack human capital. Until we have quality patriot human resources, there is no chance of us developing. In spite of all these problems the country has been through democracy is the eventual solution as it primarily prevents dictatorship and reduces abuse of public wealth.

amaranabe@gmail.com

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